Harddrive Orientation

[thomas-hn]

Hi,

do the storage experts here have any recommendation if a harddrive should be operated horizontally or vertically mounted?
If I have a look at the Supermicro chassis, they offer drive bays in both setups, but is there any advantage/disadvantage of the orientations?

I could think about that with vertically mounted drives, the air cannot get stuck below a drive (because warm air goes upwards). But on the other side I have the personal gut feeling that spinning platters should be mounted horizontally (so the platters "see" the earth's 1G all the time at all positions of the platters). Also some people mention that the cooling could be better for horizontally mounted drives.
Do you have any experience if the lifetime of the drives decreases in one of the orientations?

Furthermore, is it nowadays possible without any problems to change the orientation in the middle of the lifetime?
I have seen that Supermicro offers tower chassis which can also be mounted as 4U in a rack, which would change the drive orientation from horizontally to vertically.

I appreciate every piece of your experience.

Thanks in advance,

Thomas

 

[Constantin]

I'd focus on what the OEMs publish re: their drives. AFAIK, every one of them is indifferent re: vertical vs. horizontal orientation. I presume they care more about vibrations, which is why they segment their drives into various categories, i.e. home use, small NAS use, and large drive enclosures. Naysayers may also assert that the drive # limitations that OEMs throw out have more to do with market segmentation than reality, but who knows. For all we know they add just a little something to make the drives more vibration resistant if customers are willing to spend 10% more.

For me, the air flow is the most important thing, whether the drive is horizontal or vertical matters less. I have one 120mm fan for every 3 drives, and they stay within 5*C of ambient, even when scrubbing. The drives rest on thick silicone washers, while mounted in a fairly rigid drive cage (Lian Li). While vibrations do transmit out of the case, the magnitude seems lower than what standard external drive cases produce.

With 24k hours on many of these drives, I have yet to experience anything but infant deaths here in the NAS.

My DAS backup arrays have had a few issues / drive failures over the years but that may also have been related to carrying the DAS arrays off-site. Plus, the DAS doesn't feature the same cooling as the NAS case does. But I don't discount that the drive failures I experienced in the DAS may have to do with infant deaths as well - the DAS' don't get used all that much.

 

[Constantin]

The key here is not jerking the drive while it is operating. The gyroscopic effect can definitely be felt, and the heads are flying only a very small distance over the platter. So hard knocks are unlikely to cause happiness to the bearings, heads, or platters while the drive is operating. I'd also avoid hard drops when the drive is off, which is why drive OEMs ship their drives in packaging that allows their drives to "float".

 

[Alecmascot]

According to several manufacturers, mounting a 3/5″ hard drive horizontally, vertically, or sideways doesn’t affect the hard drive life significantly.
These are statements taken from the hard drive literature at each manufacturer’s website; it’s four years old but things probably haven’t changed much.


Hitachi:
The drive will operate in all axes (6 directions). Performance and error rate will stay within specification limits if the drive is operated in the other orientations from which it was formatted.


Western Digital:
Physical mounting of the drive: WD drives will function normally whether they are mounted sideways or upside down (any X, Y, Z orientation).


Maxtor:
The hard drive can be mounted in any orientation.


Samsung:
As long as it is securely attached to the chassis, hard disk drives may be mounted either horizontally or vertically depending on how your computer’s case is constructed.

 

[winnielinnie]

Just beware the "89/91 HDD killer" phenomenon. If your harddrive is installed horizontally (with respect the the ground level), yet it is not at a perfect 90-degree angle perpendicular to the floor, then you risk cutting its operational life by more than half![1] The industry dubs this the "89/91 killer" because 89-degrees and 91-degrees both deceptively appear as 90-degrees to the untrained eye.




I just made that up entirely out of thin air to mess with any perfectionists and OCD's that happen to browse these forums. Good luck sleeping tonight! Mwahahahahaha!

 

[Alecmascot]

I shall spend all next weekend shimming my servers so they are perpendicular to the earths surface within 10 thou

 

[awasb]

Sorry, but from a mere "experience point" this all seems rather theoretical. I'm running/carrying a portable test-NAS with eight 2.5-hdds. The real rusty iron. Three of those disks have more than 50k hours of _heavy_ duty under their belt. Sometimes the NAS even gets put "sideways", sometimes even "upright" (within rather tiny sound labs or video editing "workplaces"). Never (literally: N E V E R E V E R) did I experience something like "gyroscopic effects". (Motorcycle mountain rides ignored.) The oldest drives' MFD dates back to 2012. Maybe drives for laptops/notebooks are immune due to some special accelerometers and firmware stability management? I highly doubt that.

The HDD in my Cayman's PCM met 1.4 g-force on the track more than once, too. Both still running strong ...

 

[Constantin]

2.5” drives typically feature thin glass platters, IIRC, and hence won’t develop a lot of moment of inertia. Power up a old 3.5 drive with a lot of platters and then see how well it likes being twisted against its axis of rotation. You can definitely feel the resistance.

As for your pcm, my iPod also manages to deal with bumps in driving. Doesn’t mean it’s good for it. But unless you’re experiencing a hard stop (Ie crash) the suspension, tires, etc will dampen jerks - a lot. A drop onto concrete is far more traumatic.

 

[awasb]

Drops would be expensive. Either way. Agreed.

Does Hard Drive Orientation Affect Its Lifespan?

Many cases allow you to mount drives in vertical or horizontal configurations and external drives can be easily repositioned.

www.howtogeek.com

Correct hard drive orientation

Can we mount a hard drive sideways or vertically? Actually, yes.

www.klennet.com

Etc. etc.